Satrap

Amanda Helmann

This past quarter of the year has seen an increase of activity as things started to ramp up for Conclave, and as everyone tried to pull things to a close. A suggestion for the future to help avoid a challenge recently faced would be an increase in communication with the Legislative Committee to ensure they are on the same page regarding the proposals requested. A suggested timeline for next year is to have the Legislative Committee reach out to the chapters for proposal requests in late fall with a due date prior to the collegiate winter breaks, use that time to discuss recommendations within the committee, and return to the chapters with their recommendations soon following collegiate winter breaks. I believe this would allow ample time for review within the committee as well as allow time for chapter discussions prior to Conclave.

For the incoming Satrap, my advice is to construct a plan as soon as possible. At the start of my term as Satrap, my top priorities were to develop charges for the Executive Committee, develop charges for the Province Committees, and recruit as many Brothers as possible for the committees. When developing charges I used charges from previous years as my base, then seeked advice from Grad Brothers of our province, select members of the International Committee, and Satraps from other provinces. I found this to be very effective in receiving a good collection of input from various views.

Second bit of advice would be to stay in good communication and on top of your Committee Chairs, and in turn, encourage them to stay on top of their members. Originally I had planned on having quarterly reports from the Committee Chairs, but those turned into barely touching base, and overall less than stellar communication. One thing that I would suggest to continue the coming year is to have Committee Chairs create timelines for how they foresee the year playing out, then touching base around their proposed deadlines they set for themselves. The committees who developed their own timelines were the most successful in accomplishing their charges.

Something the Executive Committee tried out this year per my direction was having more frequent meetings which lasted a shorter amount of time. Instead of monthly meetings as used in previous years, we moved to a more recurrent, less formal model of biweekly meetings. I am personally more fond of this model. Gathering together more often allowed us to discuss a greater variety of topics, bounce more ideas off each other, and become more aware of each other’s personalities and work strategies. I think this informal format also led to us to being more comfortable with reaching out to each other outside of meeting times and allowed projects to progress quicker and with improved execution. On the downside, it does take more time out of everyone’s schedule to meet more often, and requires good communication for planning more frequent meetings. For the future, I believe it will depend on how the Satrap would like to run things and the personality of the particular Executive Committee.

A goal I had set for this year was to have greater involvement by the Executive Committee down at the chapter level to create a greater presence of ourselves throughout the province. I truly believe this would lead to better communication regarding issues that may be occurring at the chapter level, as well as bring forth excellent ideas by Brothers who may be too shy to approach the Executive Committee with their concepts and opinions. I had a goal to have each Executive Committee member attend at least one Initiation that occurred outside their home chapter. Unfortunately, this continues to be a struggle. My hope is that in the future with the expanded use of our event calendar that we may be able to better foresee when Initiations are occurring and plan travel accordingly. Besides Initiation, there are always other events occurring as well, which again, if posted early enough to the event calendar, could allow the opportunity to properly plan travel. This extends beyond the Executive Committee participating at the chapter level, in that it would allow more interchapter participation and Brother involvement from all over the province in these posted events.

Looking to the future, there are a few things I would like to see further developed in the coming year, many of which revolve around our website. There are so many new uses that have either hardly been introduced to the Brothers, or they have been introduced, but are not being used nearly to the best of their ability. As we are a region of large geographical area, we are driven to turn to other means of staying in touch and close to Brothers from Chapters beyond our own, and technology has developed to the point to allow us to do so; we have to actually use it, though, in order to receive its benefits. Ongoing projects I would love to see more extensive use of in the future include, but are not limited to, the following: fundraiser idea collection and publication, event calendar use, website integration to allow the province website to be a central hub of communication from which chapter websites branch out from, Northwest Province Newsletter with article and photo submissions from the Chapters to be published and distributed offset from Mask articles, and use of the ability for cooperative interchapter fundraiser/philanthropic events in which we can compete chapters against each other or combine their efforts toward a common goal.

My plans as immediate-past include hosting and developing workshops to be given by graduate brothers/officers to collegiate brothers, creation of a Northwest Province specific Conclave Planning Packet, continue to foster interchapter participation through encouraged use of our website, and support our province’s participation and attendance at the upcoming GCC.

I could continue to drone on, but I believe the above hits the highlights of what I currently have to report. Lastly, I could not have asked for a better Executive Committee. They were thoroughly supportive, brought so many new ideas to the table, and their execution of tasks was exceptional. It has been an absolute honor to serve the Northwest Province as Satrap and I am beyond excited to continue to watch and participate in its development in the future.